5 Strategies for Effective Stakeholder Management

In his recent post, Bill Shore urges nonprofits to pay more attention to their stakeholders, because no nonprofit organization is capable of achieving the change it seeks all on its own.

While most nonprofits understand the importance of keeping stakeholders engaged, we’ve seen many nonprofit leaders become overwhelmed with the “when, which, how often, and how” of stakeholder engagement. Our clients often ask us for help in figuring out how best to manage stakeholder engagement.

In our work with nonprofits, we have identified 5 key strategies for effective stakeholder management:

Develop a comprehensive list of people and/or organizations that have the ability to impact your organization or issue. Positively or negatively. Both are important.

Segment your stakeholders based on your understanding of the degree of their ability to impact your desired outcomes (high, medium, or low).

Assign “owners” from your organization to manage each high value stakeholder based on their level of potential impact. Who should manage “high impact” stakeholders? They should likely be assigned to the ED and Board members. What about “low impact” stakeholders? They could be great candidates for your e-newsletter.

Determine a timeline for regular communications with your key stakeholders to make sure they are always up-to-date on what they need to know to support your organization’s goals. Work to minimize the time you spend focused on those who are not in a strong position to help you achieve your goals.

Tailor your key messages to align your interests with theirs. It’s not all about you!

Nothing written above is rocket science. And that’s the point. When managing your organization’s stakeholders, you want a clear and simple process that can help you prioritize potential actions and determine your immediate next steps.

To create the social impact you want to see, you’ll need to continually build external champions, co-conspirators and activators. Staying mindful of managing how you build this network of stakeholders will keep you focused and sane. And, in the end, will likely leave you with a more robust and more productive network.

n her role as senior consultant, Isabelle Moses leads client relationships and engagements, facilitates diverse leadership teams in bold decision making and supports their execution, and contributes to overall strategic firm initiatives.

One Response to "5 Strategies for Effective Stakeholder Management"

Moleko MaimaneNovember 19, 2015 - 3:52 am

I really loved this article so much that I even mailed a copy to myself! The 5 strategies will help our small company to plan around properly for a project called “War on Leaks” which is a government project in South Africa.

Should you be interested to know a bit about this project (maybe you can volunteer more insights into it) please mail Moleko Maimane at the email address shown

Overview

At Community Wealth Partners we dream of a world in which all people thrive. To realize this dream, we help change agents solve social problems at the magnitude they exist. As a Share Our Strength organization, we bring the successful practices of one of the nation’s leading anti-hunger, anti-poverty organizations to hundreds of change agents nationwide.